This year at Cambridge I founded a small Russian poetry translation group. Unlike my German poetry translation group, which never made it beyond a Facebook group chat, I can call the Russian one a success. We have yet to meet in person, but already we have seen each other over Zoom a few times. This poem, by Nikolai Ogarev, was the first poem I translated specifically for the group.
I came across it while flicking through an anthology of Russian religious poetry that I have. Much as with Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, which I wrote about last week, I enjoy religious poetry because it makes people’s beliefs accessible and stamps them with an individual’s personality. We often come away from religious poetry believing in belief, even if we don’t get any further.
As for why I translated Ogarev’s poem instead of any of the hundred others included, the answer is rather more simple – it is nice and short! “The Wanderer” is the only poem of his included, so there was lots of white space around it, which gave me a place to begin the translation.
Anyway, here’s the poem:
The Wanderer
Misty lies our dreary vale,
Clouds conceal the sky.
Sadly blows each mournful gale,
Sadly looks each eye.
Though you wander, have no fear,
Though this life is hard -
Peace and prayer are always near,
Safe within your heart!
I enjoyed translating this poem, just as I enjoyed reading the original. One of the advantages of translating a poem (and poet) which is not too well known is that it is far easier than something from a “Great” poet. Both because the poet has inevitably been translated many times already (and certainly better than you could), but also because it’s nice to feel a certain degree of equality to your quarry. It is certainly presumption on my part, but there you go. I don’t feel, from the original, that Ogarev is a fantastic artist, but I felt he was one I was good enough to be able to translate. A similar train of thought is how I explain my success with Theodor Storm’s poetry in German.
I don’t feel the poem itself needs much explanation. It’s the kind of optimistic call for self-reliance that is always necessary for a revolutionary (and most of the rest of us). But I like it. It’s a nice little credo, the sort of thing that perhaps really can be mumbled before bed.
My surprisingly neat attempts at translating “The Wanderer”. Generally it is much worse – I feel particularly sorry for my copy of Fet’s poems.
Nikolai Ogarev is best known now for his association with Alexander Herzen, a major Russian radical who lived for much of his adult life in exile in London. Together they printed the newspaper “The Bell”, which was smuggled into Russia and provided a far more liberal outlook than could be found in most Russian papers because of tsarist censorship. Today there is a website with the same name, run from America (in English and Russian), which gives an interesting look on Russian affairs. The spirit of criticism lives on, even though there is little else that links the two.
Evgeny Baratynsky is one of the great poets of the Golden Age of Russian poetry, but he is generally overshadowed by A.S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov, both of whom are more accessible, in part because of their prose works, and in part because of their easily-digestible content. Baratynsky is a solitary figure compared to those others because of his pessimism, comparable to that of Leopardi in Italy. Where Lermontov might look sadly upon his generation, he nonetheless lived a life of action, of active revolt. Baratynsky often gives the impression he doesn’t think it’s worth even trying. He is bitter, but what makes him interesting is that he is also intellectual in vision, where other poets are more emotional. He is not always easy to read in Russian, but teasing out his meanings is a pleasant exercise. Each reading leaves you feeling you’re a little closer to understanding him.
These translations are only my first attempts at trying to pin down the poet’s soul. I like Baratynsky enough that I can see myself returning to him later, but for now I’ve only prepared these four pieces. After each poem I’ll leave a few words, describing the poem and anything I found interesting about it.
Young and unhappy, as most of us these days are, Evgeniy Baratynsky spent some time in Finland as a soldier, married, then died in Italy at the age of 44, which is pretty old for a Russian poet.
The Poems
Prayer
Lord of Heaven, grant your peace To a soul ill at ease. For the errors I've seen Send oblivion's dark screen; And to rise to your height, Give me strength to do right.
This is short and sweet, the kind of prayer that you really can mumble to yourself going to bed. Baratynsky doesn’t seem particularly interested in God – He’s rarely mentioned elsewhere – but I still like this poem. It seems a prayer for our own times, with its sense of anxiety and unease. The divided hopes of the poet – both for strength and for forgetting – reflect his ultimate lack of confidence. An alternative translation for comparison is here .
The unusual anapaestic “- – / – – /”meter and rhyme are the same as are used in the original.
“O thought…”
O thought, your fate’s that of the flower Which calls the moth with every hour; Draws in the golden bumblebee; To whom the loving midge does cling and whom the dragonfly does sing; When you have seen your wonders flee And in your turn have faded grey - Where then those wings that blessed your day? Forgotten by the host of flies - Not one of them has need of you - Just as your failing body dies Your seeds bring forth another you.
Baratynsky here shows an interest in the nature of thought. However much an idea may hold interest, that interest often turns out only to be temporary. Ideas come in and out of fashion. But what those who look beneath the surface see is that even a brief contact with an idea can be enough to lead to the creation of a new one from out of the old, so that even apparently forgotten thoughts are never truly in vain.
To a Wise Man
Carefully between our lives’ storms and the cold of the grave, o philosopher, Hope you to find a safe port - "Calm" is the name that you give it. We, who are called from the void by the tremulous word of creation - Our lives are worries alone: life and our worries are one. He who’s escaped common turmoil will think up a care For himself: palette or lyre or the words of a pen. Infants, the world’s newest entrants, its laws as if sensing, Cry in their cradle the instant they’re born.
This is probably my favourite of Baratynsky’s poems, but of course that doesn’t mean I’ve successfully translated it. The theme is the suffering of existence. We may try to find calm, but ultimately all of us will struggle, whether from our own minds or from the external world. That’s all there is to it, probably. The meter is weird and Classical though, which is cool.
Baratynsky spent a formative period in his youth up in Finland. The picture shows part of Karelia, now Russian but once partially Finnish. The landscape is the same on both sides of the border. I was there last week.
“What use to those enchained…”
What use to those enchained are dreams of being free? Just look – the river flows, and uncomplainingly, Within its given banks, according to its course; The mighty fir is powerless before the force That binds it where it stands. The stars above are caught Within the paths an unknown hand believes they ought To go. The roaming wind’s not free – for it a law Dictates the lands in which its breath has right to soar. And to the lot which is our own shall we submit – Rebellious dreams accept as dreams or else forget. We, reason’s slaves, must learn obediently to bind Our deep desires to all those things fate has in mind – Then happiness and peace shall demarcate our time. What fools we are! Is it not boundless freedom’s sign That gives us all our passions? Is it not freedom’s voice We hear within their torrents? O how hard’s for us the choice To live while feeling in our beating hearts the fire That rages in the bounds set by our fate's desire!
Another particular favourite of mine. Baratynsky here does not argue for freedom, as do those rebellious Romantics. Instead, he sees us as failing to follow the subservient example of nature, which happily obeys the limits it has been assigned at birth. But are doomed to suffering precisely because this is something we cannot do. We have passion, which fights against our fate, leading us to our downfalls. This poem is fun because of its form and punctuation and whatnot. Baratynsky shows how enchained nature is by controlling when he begins and ends the sentences, relative to the line.
Conclusion
Anyway, I like Baratynsky, just as I like Leopardi. Both of them went against the grain with their pessimism, but I like it as an antidote to the baseless optimism we sometimes encounter in our own days. There is a kind of glamour in despair that both capture, and though it is dangerous to wallow, there can certainly be some pleasure in spending time in the poets’ company.
Here are two articles providing more information about Baratynsky. This one includes a translation of Baratynsky’s awesome long poem, “Autumn”, which I could not possibly attempt to translate myself. The other, meanwhile, compares two recent book translations and gives some information about Baratynsky’s life.
I came to the Austrian German poet Trakl depressed and didn’t leave any happier. His short oeuvre, written in the final years before the first world war, is not for the faint of heart. There is very little joy to be found here, and what beauty there is in his poems is tainted by an overwhelming sense of decay. But what Trakl does offer, above and beyond his despair and endless talk of decline, is a unique view of the world, and a unique language of symbols for appreciating it. Each of his poems is a mysterious mood-piece, filled with images whose interpretations are never definite. Rilke’s view, that reading Trakl is like being “an outsider pressed against panes of glass”, looking into a space of experience which “like the space in a mirror, cannot be entered”, hits the mark.
Georg Trakl. Intensely sad, his poems reflect a sensibility that felt deeply the spiritual turbulence of his age. A turbulence that continues into our own and leaves his poetry mysterious and fresh even now.
Trakl is a strange poet, but he is also one whose work is tragically beautiful, and I hope to show that in these few translations below. His concerns seem perfect for our own age. The empty spiritual gulf left by religion’s decline, the feeling of foreboding as the world enters a new era without any ballast or sense that we are prepared for its challenges, and even the loss of a deep understanding of and connection to the natural world – all these are just as relevant now as they were as the First World War erupted. To face Trakl’s dark world is to be given a way of visualising the darkness of our own. So let’s begin.
The Poems
Trakl’s poems are made up of short and simple sentences, that are nonetheless often hard to understand. There’s a lot of ambiguity due to the syntax and punctuation, and whenever I’ve met something unclear, I’ve aimed to convey that same uncertainty in the English. After all, I’m trying to translate a mood and an atmosphere, not a technical document. If I have managed that, then I can be happy with how these have turned out. Following the poems is a bit about Trakl’s life and a conclusion.
Dark breath in green twigs. Blue blossoms float around the face Of the lonely one, his golden step Dying under the olive tree. The night is filled with the fluttering of drunk wings. So quietly bleeds out humility, Dew, which slowly drips from the blossoming thorn. The mercy of shining arms Embraces a breaking heart.
This painting (Starry Night), by Edvard Munch, strikes me as a good representation of my feeling as I read the final two stanzas of “Spiritual Twilight.” Munch was working at about the same time as Trakl and I feel like both of them are often similar in tone and image.
Spiritual Twilight (DE) Silence encounters at the forest’s hem Its dark quarry. On the hill the evening wind ends quietly,
The blackbird’s cries are stilled, And the soft flutes of autumn Go silent in their pipes.
On a black cloud You sail, drunk on the poppy, The ponds of the night,
The stars in the heavens. The sister’s lunar voice is always calling Through the spirit’s night.
The Sun (DE) Daily comes the yellow sun across the hill. The forest, the dark beast, man – hunter or shepherd – All are beautiful.
Reddish rises the fish in the green pond. Under the round heavens The fisherman quietly rows in his blue boat.
Slowly ripens the grape, the grain. When the day silently ends, A good and an evil is prepared.
When the world becomes night, The wanderer quietly lifts his heavy eyes; The sun breaks out of a gloomy chasm.
The Sun, also by Munch. I wonder if, had Trakl lived to grow older, he too would have found way of looking at and representing the world that moved beyond fear and anxiety.
In Spring (DE) Softly sank from dark steps the snow; In the shadow of the tree The lovers raise their rosy lids.
Star and night always follow The dark calls of the mariners; And the oars beat softly in time.
Soon on the ruined wall blooms The violet; The temples of the lonely one silently grow green.
Remembrance, a buried hope, Preserves this brown wood frame, Where dahlias hang above - An ever stiller homecoming; The ruined garden, the dark reflection Of childhood years, So that from blue lids the tears plunge Unstoppably. Now swim the glassy minutes Of gloom Over and into the night.
Who was Trakl? Biography and its Absence
Georg Trakl was born in 1887 and died towards the end of 1914, likely by his own hand. He was born in Salzburg to a family of not great financial means, but all the same this is where he was most happy. His relations with his sister Grete, herself a musical prodigy, may well have been incestuous. In his poems Trakl often writes about the “sister”, but it’s difficult to know what to make of that. What is more clear is that Trakl developed a drug addiction that he supported through becoming a pharmacist. Once war broke out Trakl joined the Austro-Hungarian army as a medical officer on the Eastern Front. By this point his mood was extremely unstable and the experience of the battle of Grodek, though it led to perhaps is most famous poem, also led to Trakl’s final breakdown and probable suicide of a cocaine overdose.
Yet all of this is almost irrelevant in the poems. As is clear above, Trakl hides himself from view. The experience of reading his work is rather like floating through a deep fog. There is nothing so solid as an “I”, even a lyrical “I”, to hold on to. The places of his life certainly make their appearances, including Grodek itself, but always more as symbols and maps of an internal world than as real settings, at least it seems that way to me.
The lovely German edition of Trakl’s work from Reclam which I’ve been reading also includes many of his letters. But these, too, are not of much use for understanding his poems. We can hear Trakl’s own voice, always in pain, and always suffering. It only caused me to feel a terrible and futile desire to help the poor man, but the poems remained – perhaps thankfully – impenetrable. “I was terribly sick for a few days, I think from a mourning that cannot be put into words”. Shortly before he dies he writes “I feel like I’ve already almost passed over into the beyond”. What I like about him so much is that his sensibility really does seem to belong to another world, no matter how much suffering seems to be involved.
“I feel like I’ve already almost passed over into the beyond.” The painting is Munch’s Self Portrait in Hell. Trakl’s work, like Munch’s, is filled with religious symbolism. Ultimately, any positive message in Trakl lurks within this Christian impulse.
Conclusion – Religion and the Poppy
Probably my favourite pieces here are the first two. The
image of the blackbird, of the innocent forced to suffer its way through the
world, lies at the heart of Trakl’s whole project, and the bird’s short and
brutal poem strikes me as being particularly beautiful. But it also contains
within it a rare hint at redemption. Trakl’s religious inclinations are, as
with so much else about him, not entirely clear. But for me at least, this poem
has a spiritual angle to it: the suggestion that for all our suffering there
may lurk at the end of the tunnel a kind of salvation. It’s not unlike
Dostoevsky, in its way.
As for “Spiritual Twilight”, I love its tone and sense of
mystery. For me it really conveys that world of abstract rumination we fall
into somewhere in the depths of our despair. It is a weightless poem, just as
we, in our thoughts, are weightless too. But one day we must open our eyes. And
that is where the challenge lies.
The last word on all this should go to Trakl himself. This
is how he describes himself, towards the end of his life: “Too little love, too
little justice and mercy, and always too little love; too much hardness, pride,
and all sorts of transgressions – this is me. I am certain that I only refrain
from evil out of cowardice and weakness and in doing so shame even that part of
me.”
I hope, having read a few of his poems, you have a sense that for all the mercy and love he did not receive himself, he was more than willing to give plenty of it out to those who needed it in his work. The strange thing is, for all his despair, I find myself feeling less alone for reading in his company. And that’s why I think he’s a fantastic poet.
